Are there any biomarkers that will help predict who will or will not achieve sustained MRD negativity?

Are there any biomarkers that can help predict who will achieve sustained MRD negativity?

So achieving sustained MRD negativity means that your bone marrow has very very few myeloma cells there such that on that assay you couldn't detect any of them using a minimal residual disease magnifying lens.

That's a great thing. And not surprisingly, the patients that are able to achieve sustained MRD negativity are most likely those patients who have lower risk or easier to treat disease. Who are these patients? These are the exact patients you think. They don't have extra medullary myeloma. They have low beta two micro globulin and normal albumin. They have low LDH, meaning they're all lower stage disease

In the vast majority of these patients. They don't have any significant high risk genetic features. Yes, they have 2 or 3 copies of chromosomes five, seven, nine. You may have a deletion of chromosome 13, but no, they don't have a deletion of chromosome 17. They don't have amplification of chromosome one. Any of these none of these high risk genetic features.

That's what you see most commonly. So the patients who have lower risk disease and are more susceptible to treatment, those are the patients that are more likely to achieve sustained MRD negativity.